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How to Teach Writing Across the
Curriculum: Ages 6–8

Now in an updated second edition, How to Teach Writing Across the Curriculum: Ages
6–8 provides a range of practical suggestions for teaching non-fiction writing skills and
linking them to children’s learning across the entire curriculum. Providing a number of
suggestions for teachers and putting emphasis on creative approaches to teaching
children writing in diverse and innovative ways, it offers:

● techniques for using speaking and listening, drama and games to prepare for writing;
● suggestions for the use of cross-curricular learning as a basis for writing;
● planning frameworks and ‘skeletons’ to promote thinking skills;
● information on key language features of non-fiction texts;
● examples of non-fiction writing;
● guidance on the process of creating writing from ‘skeleton notes’.

With new hints and tips for teachers and suggestions for reflective practice, How to
Teach Writing Across the Curriculum: Ages 6–8 will equip teachers with all the skills and
materials needed to create enthusiastic non-fiction writers in their primary classroom.

Sue Palmer is a writer, broadcaster and education consultant. Specialising in the

teaching of literacy, she has authored over 150 books and has contributed to numerous
television programmes and software packages. She is the author of Speaking Frames:
How to Teach Talk for Writing: Ages 8–10 and Speaking Frames: How to Teach Talk for
Writing: Ages 10–14, also published by Routledge.
Also available in the Writers’ Workshop Series:

How to Teach Writing Across the Curriculum: Ages 8–14

Sue Palmer
(ISBN: 978-0-415-57991-9)
How to Teach Writing
Across the Curriculum:
Ages 6–8

Second edition

Sue Palmer
First edition published as How to Teach Writing Across the Curriculum at Key Stage 1
by David Fulton Publishers 2003

This edition published 2011

by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

by Routledge
270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010.

To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.

© 2011 Sue Palmer

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any
electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Palmer, Sue, 1948–
How to teach writing across the curriculum : ages 6–8 / by Sue Palmer. — 2nd ed.
p. cm.
1. Language arts (Elementary)—Great Britain. 2. Language arts—Correlation with content subjects—
Great Britain. 3. English language—Writing—Study and teaching (Elementary)—Great Britain.
4. Curriculum planning—Great Britain. I. Title.
LB1576.P254 2011
372.62’3—dc22
2010005853

ISBN 0-203-84600-1 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN13: 978-0-415-57990-2 (pbk)

ISBN13: 978-0-203-84600-1 (ebk)
Contents

Acknowledgements vii

Introduction: teaching writing ix

From speech to writing ix
Learning to write x
Why writing is important x
The foundations of literacy xi
When should writing start? xii

PART 1: The two horses model for cross-curricular writing 1

1.1 Talk for learning 2
Learn cross-curricular content 2
Recount content
Instruction content
Report content
Explanation content
Organise content for learning 5
Skeletons for writing
A range of skeletons
How to use skeletons

1.2 Talk for writing 9

Read examples of the text type 9
Listen > imitate > innovate > invent
Reading aloud to children
Children reading aloud
Talk the language of writing 12
Speaking frames
Sentence level work
Paired work
Two horses before the cart – reprise 15

PART 2: Case studies 17

2.1 Recount writing 18
Case study 1: our day at school 18
Case study 2: the wedding 19
Case study 3: Grace Darling 20
More ideas 22
vi Contents

2.2 Report text 24

Case study 1: healthy and unhealthy foods 24
Case study 2: how we are different 25
Case study 3: seaside holidays 26
More ideas 26

2.3 Instruction writing 29

Case study 1: honey biscuits 29
Case study 2: honey biscuits (four- and five-year-olds) 30
Case study 3: how to cross the road 32
More ideas 33

2.4 Explanation writing 35

Case study 1: how babies grow 35
Case study 2: ourselves 36
More ideas 38

PART 3: Teaching materials 41

3.1 Recount text 42

3.2 Report text 48

3.3 Instruction text 55

3.4 Explanation text 61

PART 4: Appendices 69
Appendix 1 Nuts and bolts: some suggestions for teaching writing skills 70
Appendix 2 Shared, Guided and Independent Writing 89
Appendix 3 Case study materials 93
Acknowledgements

This book owes its existence to the many teachers throughout the UK who heard about
‘skeletons’ on my literacy inservice courses, tried them out in the classroom and
reported back. I am greatly indebted to them for their interest, enthusiasm, generosity
and wisdom.
Thanks are also due to the National Literacy Strategy, which sponsored me to inves-
tigate the use of skeletons in junior classes, and David Fulton Publishers for
commissioning the original books How to Teach Writing Across the Curriculum at Key
Stage 1 and Key Stage 2. This work made me desperately keen to know how ‘skeletons’
could work in the classroom with different age groups, and increased my focus on the
significance of speaking and listening as a precursor of any writing activity.
The opportunity to find out more was offered by Jeremy Sugden, editor of Child
Education magazine, who let me research and write a series of articles on using skele-
tons in Key Stage 1. Several of the case studies in How to Teach Writing Across the
Curriculum: Ages 6–8 are based on these articles; others have been generously
provided by teachers I met during inservice travels.
I should also like to thank the children of the Abbey School, Wybourne Primary
School, East Dene School, Sacred Heart Catholic Primary School, Comin Infants
School, Roskear Primary School, Yew Tree Primary School and Totley Primary School
for providing the many lovely examples of work. This is by far the best way of illustrat-
ing how to teach – and learn – cross-curricular writing skills.
And finally, my thanks to my current editor Bruce Roberts, who has given me the
chance to update these materials, and to move beyond the restrictions placed on the
original books by an educational orthodoxy that over-focused on specific literacy skills
at the expense of children’s natural disposition to use language for learning, and their
innate capacity to build on that disposition to develop literacy.
Introduction: teaching writing

Some years ago, I was chatting with a group of primary children about the differences
between talking and writing.
‘Which is harder?’ I asked.
They looked at me as though I was mad: ‘Writing of course!’
‘Why?’
There was a long silence. Then a little chap with glasses put up his hand.
‘Well,’ he said, choosing his words carefully. ‘When you talk, you don’t have to think
about it. You just open your mouth and the words sort of flow out … ’
He paused, his brow furrowed. ‘But when you write …’
The rest of the class nodded encouragement.
‘Well, you have to get a pencil, and you have to get a piece of paper, and then … and
then …’
We all waited agog.
‘ … and then you feel really tired.’
I think that sums it up pretty well. I’ve been a professional writer for the last 25 years,
and know exactly what he means. I go into my office, switch on the computer, the screen
lights up, a new blank page sits before me, and I think … ‘I’ll just go and make a cup of
tea.’

From speech to writing

The critical – and enormous – difference between speaking and writing is that human
beings are hard-wired for speech. As long as they listen to plenty of language in their
earliest years, and have opportunities to copy the sounds and words they hear, they’ll
start to talk. If that talk is nurtured through interaction with adults and other children,
eventually the words will just flow out.
But we aren’t hard-wired for literacy. Reading and writing are cultural constructs, and
each new generation has to be taught how words can be turned into squiggly symbols
on paper. What’s more, the language of writing is very different from the natural
language patterns of speech.
Speech is generally interactive – we bat words and phrases back and forth. It’s
produced within a shared context, so it’s fragmented, disorganised and a great deal of
meaning goes by on the nod. In fact, you can get by in speech without ever forming a
sentence, or at least only very simple ones. To make links between ideas, speakers tend
to use very simple connectives, like the ubiquitous and or, to denote sequence, and then.
Nowadays, in a world in which images are increasingly taking over from words,
speech has become even less specific. Gesture, facial expression and tone of voice are
often used instead of verbal description (for instance: ‘And I was feeling like – Whaaat?’
where ‘Whaaat?’ is pronounced in a tone of exaggerated disbelief, accompanied by an
expression of wide-eyed incredulity.)
x Introduction

But written language is produced for an unknown, unseen audience, who may have
no background knowledge at all about the subject. It must therefore be explicit and care-
fully crafted. It requires more extensive vocabulary than speech and organisation into
sentences for clarity. The sentences become increasingly complex as the writer
expresses increasingly complex ideas, using a widening range of connectives to show
how these ideas relate to each other.
So the mental effort involved in writing, even for someone who’s used to it, is immea-
surably greater than that involved in speaking. It’s not just a case of working out what
you want to say without the benefit of body language, facial expression, voice tone and
a shared context. You also have to translate it into a much more complex, utterly unnat-
ural language code – different vocabulary, different sentence structures, the challenge
of making a whole text hold together and make sense.

Learning to write

For apprentice writers, the task is even more complex and daunting. As well as strug-
gling to convey meaning in an unfamiliar code, they simultaneously have to:

1 remember how words are composed of sounds, and wrestle with the exigencies of our
spelling system. That means (a) applying what they know about phonics and (b)
remembering which of many common English words don’t actually follow phonic rules;
2 manipulate a pencil across a page, remembering how to form the letters, perhaps
joining them together, leaving a space between words, and keeping the whole thing
going in as straight a line as possible;
3 keep in mind all the conventions of written sentences – capital letter at the beginning,
full stop at the end, other rules of punctuation, special ‘written code’ words.

After a lifetime as a teacher and writer, I believe that learning to write is – for the major-
ity of children – the most complex and challenging academic task they undertake in their
whole lives. What’s more, despite the immense amount of mental (and physical) effort
involved, the rewards in the early stages are minimal while the potential for failure is
great. So it’s all too easy for motivation to grind to a halt.
It’s not surprising, then, that after several decades of intense effort on behalf of the
teaching profession – with government initiatives and targets galore – writing is still a
problem area. Children who lose motivation through repeated failure can begin to feel
so ‘tired’ about the whole business, that they’re never able to summon up the effort to
become fluent writers.

Why writing is important

Yet becoming a fluent writer, even in an age of multimedia and speech-activated soft-
ware, is extraordinarily important. In fact, as screen-based communication and
entertainment proliferate, I believe that learning to write has become an even more crit-
ical element in the development of children’s thinking skills.
As mentioned earlier, spoken language is spontaneous – you don’t have to think
about what you say before you say it – while written language must be carefully crafted.
It requires conscious control on behalf of the writer. This capacity to control behaviour
 Introduction xi

and thought processes is the mark of a civilised, educated brain. And increasing control
of language (vocabulary, sentence structure, linking ideas together) underpins many
aspects of rational thought. So, from children’s first faltering efforts to spell out The cat
sat on the mat to their ability to compose an essay at university, the act of writing helps
make them more educated, civilised and rational.
Neuroscientists have found that literacy ‘changes the architecture of the brain’. The
human capacity for reading and writing not only allows us to record our ideas, and thus
share our developing understanding of the world over time and space. It also creates
massively enriched neural networks in the skulls of each and every one of us. It changes
our minds.
For a young child, learning to rally all those writing sub-skills means orchestrating
activity in many areas of the brain – a huge mental task (no wonder they feel tired). As
their basic competence grows, the physical act of writing means children must slow
down their thought processes, giving time to consider the language itself. How can I best
express this idea? How can I make the links between one idea and the next? With ideas
pinned down on a page, the writer can refine or revise them – finding links, explaining
underlying connections (and perhaps exploring them further), developing arguments.
What’s more, as children gradually acquire the literate vocabulary and sentence
structures needed to write well, this more sophisticated language can feed into their
speech, and gradually they become able to talk in literate language patterns too.
Literacy is about a great deal more than reading and writing – it’s about the way people
think and speak and (since it helps develop self control) even how they act.

The foundations of literacy

But such a complex and important process cannot be rushed. It takes time to lay down
secure neural networks, and in the early stages – as mentioned above – the learners’
motivation is critical. The more I’ve discovered about the process of learning to write, the
more convinced I am that, in the early stages, we should concentrate on laying firm foun-
dations for all the various sub-skills involved, rather than rushing children to ‘orchestrate’
those skills too soon. In Foundations of Literacy, 3rd edition (Network Continuum, 2008)
written with early years specialist Ros Bayley, I identified these as:

● competence and confidence in speaking and listening, a wide vocabulary, well-devel-

oped auditory memory and access to a range of expressive language structures;
● familiarity with the patterns of written language through frequent hearing and repeat-
ing of favourite stories, as well as sentence repetition and completion activities;
● a thorough acquaintance with the alphabet names and letters shapes;
● understanding of what writing is, what it’s for and how phonic knowledge is involved
in converting spoken words into printed letters;
● sound phonemic awareness and a firm understanding of the main ways speech
sounds are represented in writing;
● good physical control, including hand-eye coordination, and confident manipulation of
a pencil to form letter-shapes.

In order to acquire these sub-skills, children need many other activities – play and talk
with other children and interested adults; songs, rhymes and opportunities to move to
music; art, craft, construction and mark-making activities to hone hand-eye coordination;
xii Introduction

and (especially for boys) plenty of active outdoor activity to develop the physical control
needed to sit still in a classroom and concentrate on small-scale desk-bound work. So
before we even think about getting children writing – let alone writing across the curricu-
lum – we must make sure these foundations are well-established.
It’s also much easier to learn to read than to write. Once children have learned the
elements of phonics, decoding simple texts helps them internalise the sound–symbol
system of English. And reading aloud helps familiarise them with the shape, rhythm and
conventions of written sentences. It can also increase motivation – once children recog-
nise the power of written language (how an authorial voice carries more weight than
everyday speech), they’re more prepared to make an effort to become writers them-
selves.

When should writing start?

In most European countries, children are not expected to pick up a pencil until they are
six years old (and in the countries that do best in international comparisons of literacy
scores, until they are seven). Before then, teachers concentrate on child-friendly activi-
ties to develop the sub-skills listed above. Pencils and other writing equipments are
available, in writing corners and role-play areas, and most children enjoy writing as part
of their play. But while their teachers encourage and support them in these emergent
writing activities, there are no formal writing lessons.
In most of the UK, however, we have tended over recent decades to start children on
formal writing activities at a very early age. The first edition of How To Teach Writing
Across the Curriculum was based on the framework imposed on English schools by the
National Literacy Strategy, in which whole class teaching was expected from the recep-
tion, when children are only four or five. I suspect that this tendency to rush the process
has contributed to many children’s long-term problems with writing, and greatly regret
my part in promoting it.
But now that schools have been freed from this rigid centrally-prescribed framework,
teachers should feel able to establish sound foundations for writing before beginning
formal work. The ‘skeleton’ method of recording suggested in this book is suitable for
use with children at many levels of writing readiness. As several of the case studies illus-
trate, skeletons can be used to organise information in pictorial form (photographs, clip
art or the children’s own pictures), or by manipulating sentences scribed by the teacher.
This means the sub-skills of ‘organizing ideas’ may be taught alongside phonemic
awareness, phonic knowledge, the skills underpinning handwriting and all the other
foundations of literacy. Using skeletons to record activities and discoveries also provides
many opportunities for purposeful talk and vocabulary development. And fluent confident
spoken language is probably the most important foundation of all, not only for literacy
but for learning in general.
In a school where teachers have taken the time and effort to build solid foundations
in this way, by the time children are six or seven years of age they should be ready to
take conscious control of their own thought processes. And to make the momentous
leap from the spontaneous natural language of speech to conscious manipulation of the
complex symbolic system we know as ‘writing’.
 PART 1
The two horses model for
cross-curricular writing

You can’t teach children to write before they can talk. It’s putting the cart before the
horse.

It’s over a decade now since a teacher in Yorkshire uttered those words at one of my
inservice courses. As I drove home that night I started wondering exactly how teachers
could ensure that the ‘horse’ of talk was properly hitched up to draw the ‘cart’ of writing.
Eventually, after long conversations with many colleagues (especially my fellow
literacy consultant Pie Corbett), I concluded that, in order to write, children need two
sorts of talk:

● talk for learning – plenty of opportunities to use the simple spontaneous language of
speech to ensure they understand the ideas and content they’re going to write about;
● talk for writing – opportunities to meet and internalise the relevant patterns of ‘literate
language’, to help them turn that content into well-crafted sentences.

So children need not one but two ‘horses’ to draw the writing ‘cart’:

TWO HORSES BEFORE THE CART

Talk for learning

LEARN ORGANISE
cross-curricular content for
content writing

WRITE
Talk for writing

READ TALK
examples of the language
the text type of writing

Figure 1.1 A teaching plan for cross-curricular literacy (simple form)

1.1 Talk for learning

Learn cross-curricular content

In order to understand the content of cross-curricular teaching, young children need –

just as they have always needed – plenty of opportunities for talk. These are provided
through the sort of good infant practice long recognized as valuable opportunities for
activity and interaction, such as:

● learning corners and role-play areas, preferably linked to the subject-matter

concerned, in which they can engage in imaginative play (this may sometimes be
enhanced by adult involvement in the children’s play, expanding vocabulary and
ideas);
● outings, excursions, visits and other opportunities to find out about the wider world
through experience and talk to a range of adults;
● active engagement in learning whenever possible: making, doing, experimenting,
learning through play;
● plenty of ‘props and prompts’ for learning – for instance, relevant items to look at,
touch and talk about while you are teaching or sharing a text, and opportunities for
‘Show and Tell’;
● opportunities to ‘experience’ factual information with the teacher’s direction in drama
lessons and through specific drama activities like hot-seating;
● using puppets to act out what they have learned, and to ‘speak through’ when
explaining something (shy children often find it much easier to talk to a puppet or soft
toy than to the class, and may also be able to respond on a puppet’s behalf when
they find it difficult to speak up themselves);
● storytelling sessions – listening to adults telling stories, which can of course be true
stories, and having opportunities to tell them themselves;
● responding to ideas through music, movement, art and craft.

Without such opportunities for active, motivating learning, young children are unlikely to
develop the ideas, concepts, vocabulary and excitement about what they have learned
that underpins good writing. With so much attention these days to ‘pencil and paper’
work it is sometimes tempting to think that this type of practice is a waste of valuable
time. In fact, it is the bedrock of literacy.
Experience has shown that certain speaking and listening activities sit particularly
comfortably with the different text types we use for cross-curricular writing, as shown in
the boxes. These activities reflect the underlying structures of thought upon which the
text types depend, and thus link to the planning skeletons described in the next section.
 Talk for learning 3

Recount content
Before writing recounts children should be clear on the details and sequence of the
story through activities such as:

Retelling: select children to retell short sections of the story to the class. Or ask
children in pairs to retell it to each other.

Role-play: ask children in pairs or groups to dramatize significant sections of the

story, which they can then re-enact for the class.

Teacher in role: take on the role of a key character in the story yourself, and draw
the class with you in re-enacting the story.

Puppetry: let children act out the story with puppets. They can improvise lines as
they go, or one child can be narrator, telling the story while the puppets perform.

Freeze-frame: ask groups of children to create living tableaux of incidents in the

story. Invite participants to step out of each tableau, and comment on what’s going
on and their part in it.

Instruction content
The best way to familiarise oneself with the content of instructions is actually to carry
out the process (or, if that’s not possible, watch it), talking it through as you go.

Partnered work: ask children to carry out the process (or watch it being carried out)
in pairs, stopping after each stage to talk through exactly what has been done.

TV demonstration: ask pairs or groups to give a demonstration of the process,

describing what they’re doing, as if they were the presenter on a TV programme.
Others watch and question as necessary.

Running commentary: ask pairs or groups to mime the process (e.g. Road Safety
Rules), or act it out with puppets, while others give a running commentary – like a
road safety public service broadcast.

Barrier game: this is a good way for children to find out whether their instructions
are clear enough. Give two children the equipment needed for an activity (e.g. a
potato and some Mr Potato Head pieces), place a screen between them so neither
can see what the other’s doing. One child decides on the activity and carries it out,
giving instructions as s/he goes, so the other can mimic it. Remove the barrier and
check how successful the instructions were.

Report content
Non-chronological reports involve accurate and clear description. The traditional
‘Show and Tell’ is the starting point for this, but you could also use activities like
these:
4 The two horses model for cross-curricular learning

Tell Mr Bear: Mr Bear knows absolutely nothing. Ask children in pairs to work out a
clear description of the item/topic in question that will ensure his complete under-
standing.

Visiting alien: you play an alien visitor to Earth, totally ignorant about humans, their
ways and possessions. Give individual children pictures of earth objects (e.g. a pillar
box, a car, a bed) and ask them to explain their function to the alien. The rest of the
group can chip in to help if necessary.

Brains Trust: when children have found out information on a topic, create a Brains
Trust panel so each can give a brief talk to the class on their subject then answer
questions.

TV documentary/newscast: as in the case study on the previous page – this could

include commentary, interviews and, where appropriate, mini-dramatisations.

Barrier game: give one child a simple picture or artefact related to the topic and
place a screen between them so the other child can’t see it. The first child must
describe the item so that the second can draw it, or pick out a duplicate from a given
selection. (When using barrier games to practise description, illustrated wrapping
paper – e.g. paper with lots of pictures of cats – can be useful. Give the first child a
cut-out of one cat, and the second a complete sheet to spot the appropriate cat.)

Another aspect of non-chronological report writing is the development of categorisa-

tion skills:

Sorting activities: most infant classrooms have games or activities requiring

children to sort items into groups, e.g. model animals, coloured shapes, pictures of
activities. Provide items of this sort related to cross-curricular work, ask pupils in
pairs to sort them into groups and then explain the reasons behind their choices.

In the hoop: lay a number of hoops on the ground to represent different categories
of information in your current project (e.g. fruit, dairy products, meat, vegetables).
Ask each pupil to complete a sentence (e.g. ‘A ............ is a type of .........’) and go to
stand in the correct hoop.

The corner game: choose four categories related to your topic, and make signs to
put in the four corners of the hall to indicate the categories. On slips of paper write
words or phrases, or draw pictures, which fit into one or other of the categories.
Children take a slip and read it, then run around the hall until a given signal, such as
a whistle, when they must rush to the appropriate corner. Each child (or selected
children) then explain their presence in their particular corner: ‘My paper says
__________. I came to the_________ corner because_______’

Explanation content
The best way to familiarise children with scientific concepts such as cause and effect
is through involving them in meaningful activities, followed by discussion. Other
preliminary activities could involve:
 Talk for learning 5

Physical theatre: think up a way to dramatise the process, changing children into
caterpillars that turn into butterflies, bones/muscles in an arm, seeds that grow, etc..
Pairs or groups mime the process, while others give a commentary.

Teacher (or puppet) in role: you (or the puppet) act the part of an earnest but very
dim seeker after knowledge, requiring the clearest of clear explanations.

Organise content for learning

During the early years of primary education, children are likely to meet many examples
of four major non-fiction text types. They may also need to record cross-curricular learn-
ing that fits these structures:

● recounts (see page 42);

● non-chronological reports (see page 48);
● instructions (see page 55);
● simple explanation texts (see page 61).

They may also come across the remaining two key text types – persuasion and
balanced discussion – but seldom need to write or record this information. So this
section and the case studies that follow deal only with the four listed above.
The different text types are characterised by their underlying structures – the way that
particular types of information are organised for writing. Awareness of these structures
can become a powerful aid to planning, allowing children to organise their ideas and
understanding in the form of notes or pictures before – or, especially in the early stages,
instead of – writing.

Skeletons for writing

I originally devised the ‘skeleton’ frameworks shown in the box for the English National
Literacy Strategy. At the time, we called them ‘graphic organisers’ or ‘diagrammatic
representations’, neither of which were snappy titles to use with young children. It was
a little boy in the north east of England who christened them. He rushed up to his teacher
with the words: ‘They’re skeletons, aren’t they, Miss? They’re the skeletons that you
hang the writing on!’ Thanks to that unknown Geordie lad, the skeleton frameworks
became instantly memorable.
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